
^^^<2yu oJL^i^ (LeyuLiZy 




President 
The Burns Club of St. Louis 



BURNS NIGHTS IN ST. LOUIS 



BURNS AND ENGLISH POETRY 

BURNS AND THE PROPHET ISAIAH 

BURNS AND THE AULD CLAY BIGGIN 



View Points of 

PROFESSOR J. L. LOWES, JUDGE M. N. SALE and 

SOLICITOR GENERAL F. W. LEHMANN. 



THE CLUB, THE ROOM, THE BURNSIANA, 
THE NIGHTS 

By WALTER B. STEVENS 



Printed for Private Distributioa 

to 

Lovers of Burns 

by 

Tlie Burns Club of St. Louis 

II 



33 



By transfer 
The White House 
Anarch 3rd, 1913 




THE BURNS CLUB OF ST. LOUIS 

This club exists, the by-laws say, "for the pur- 
pose of commemorating the life and genius of 
Robert Burns." The purpose had its original 
expression in the Burns Cottage at the World's 
Fair of 1904. Reproductions of palaces, copies 
of historic mansions, imposing types of archi- 
tecture of many lands were grouped in "The 
Place of Nations," as it was called. In the midst 
of them was the replica of the clay-walled, straw- 
thatched birthplace of him who "brought from 
Heaven to man the message of the dignity of 
humanity." It was built and maintained by the 
Burns Cottage Association, composed of men 
who had found inspiration in the creed of Burns. 
The Burns Club of St. Louis succeeded the 
Cottage Association. It was given a permanent 
home in the upper chamber of the quaint house 
of the Artists' Guild. There, about the great 
fireplace, the Club has assembled treasured relics 
of Burns' life. Upon the walls are portraits of 
Burns, sketches of scenes made familiar by his 
writings and facsimiles of many poems in his 
handwriting. The chamber is open to the rafters. 
It has little windows close up under the eaves. 
The whole interior architecture accords with the 
collection of Burnsiana and with the uses to which 
the chamber is put by the Club. 

Anniversaries of Burns are observed by the 
Burns Club of St. Louis in ways original. The 
table is spread in the club room. Not forgotten 
are the oatmeal cake, the haggis, the Scotch 



shortbread. By way of introduction to the din- 
ner the president repeats a few Hnes from Burns, 
such as The Selkirk Grace : 

Some hae meat, and canna eat, 
And some wad eat that want it; 
But we hae meat and we can eat, 
And sae the Lord be thanket. 

In numbers the Club is not unwieldy. The 
members fill comfortably the table running the 
length of the chamber, with room for a congenial 
guest or two. There is enough Scotch blood in 
the gathering to save the flavor of Scotch speech. 
But the membership ranges widely in nativity, 
in creed and in vocation. The spirit of Burns 
pervades and abides. Lines with which this spirit 
is invoked are found by the president of the Club 
in such quotations from Burns as his own fare- 
well to the brethren of St, James lodge at Tar- 
bolton : 

A last request permit me here 
When yearly ye assemble a', 
One round, I ask it with a tear, 
To him, the Bard, that's far awa'. 

As the dinner progresses, there are stories of 
Burns ; there are spirited discussions on opinions 
about Burns ; there are quotations and inter- 
pretations ; there is singing of the songs of 
''rantin' rovin' Robin." And thus the Burns 
Night in St. Louis moves along all too rapidly. 

When the table is cleared, comes the more 
formal event of the evening — a thoughtful ad- 
dress on Burns, sometimes given by a member 
of the Club, sometimes delivered by a guest. .With 

4 



the feeling that the interest will be shared by 
other lovers of Burns, two of these addresses be- 
fore the Burns Club of St. Louis are presented 
in this book. With them is incorporated the very 
noteworthy address on Burns by Frederick W. 
Lehmann, now solicitor general of the United 
States, which made memorable Scottish Day at 
the World's Fair. Fittingly, place is given to the 
"Lines to Burns" written by a talented Chinaman, 
a member of the Chinese Imperial Commission 
to the World's Fair. 

W. B. S. 



After the dinner of 1911, Professor J. L. Lowes, of the 
chair of English at Washington University, took the 
Burns Club to an unusual viewpoint of the poet's genius. 
He led his hearers back to the English poets of the 
Eighteenth Century. He described and illustrated the 
repressed, pent-up, tamed spirit of that period until its 
very smoldering presence seemed to fill the chamber. 
And then with sudden transition, he caused to burst 
forth, without bounds, the soulful flame of Burns. 

The honor guest of the Club upon this Burns Night 
was David Franklin Houston, chancellor of Washington 
University. 



BURNS AND ENGLISH POETRY. 

By John Livingston Lowes, 
Professor of English, Washington University, 

January 28, 1911. 

This address was delivered extempore, and, as it stands, has been 
dictated from scanty notes. It is printed here, not because the writer 
deems it in form or content worthy of such permanence — for he does 
not; but because the Burns Club has asked that it be done. — J. L. L. 

No one but a Scotchman born has any right to 
speak of Burns before a Burns Club, and I, alas ! 
am not a Scotchman born. It is true that one 
of my remote grandmothers was named Janet 
Adair, and that an ancestor of my own name lies 
buried, for some inscrutable reason, in Holyrood 
Chapel. But another grandmother bore the name 
of Anne West, and still another was christened 
in unspellable Holland Dutch, so that I fear there 
is a blending of blood which excludes me from 
the magic circle of those who call Burns country- 
man. Moreover, Burns is like Shakespeare, in 
that everything about him has been already said, 
and most of it said finally. To attempt to add 
a note to the chorus of praise with which for a 
century he has been greeted would be "to paint 
the lily, and add another hue unto the rainbow." 
My only salvation (and that for the time being 
is yours, too) lies in approaching Burns from 
outside ; and what I wish, with your permission, 
to do very briefly this evening, is to consider 
something of what Burns brought into the great 
current of English poetry. 

Burns appeared at the beginning of a reaction 
against a reaction. The century to whose close 
he belonged had swung far enough away from 

7 



the traits and qualities which had characterized 
the great age that had preceded it. Few periods 
have been so keenly alive, so virile and red- 
blooded, so brilliantly varied in their interests 
and activities as that of Elizabeth. There was 
a zest in living that expressed itself in a superb 
spontaneity, a careless audacity, an unconsidered 
lavishness, both in life and in letters, which it 
would be hard to parallel elsewhere. There was 
the stir of great movements in the air. The in- 
fluence of the Renaissance, sweeping up through 
France and Spain from Italy — "that great limbec 
of working brains," as old James Howell after- 
wards called it — had reached England. The 
voyages to the New World and the daring ex- 
ploits of men who (in the phrase which em- 
bodies the very spirit of the Elizabethan voy- 
agers) "made a wild dedication of themselves 
To unpath'd waters, undream'd shores" — all this 
had powerfully stimulated men's imagination. 
The menace of Spain was making possible such 
patriotism as burns in old Gaunt's dying words: 

This happy breed of men, this little world. 
This precious stone set in the silver sea . . . 
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this 

England . . . 
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear 

land . . . 
England, bound in with the triumphant sea. 

In a word, men were living deeply, broadly, 
keenly, and the literature reflected that depth 
and breadth and vividness. It reflected it in the 
richness and searching veracity with which al- 



most every phase of human passion was de- 
picted; it reflected it in the unfettered freedom 
of form that characterized the literature from 
the briefest lyric to a tragedy Hke Lear ; and it 
was couched in a diction which was often Hke 
the large utterance of the early gods. 

Then gradually the pendulum began to swing 
the other way. This is no place to enter into 
the reasons for the change. The change came, 
and it is what it carried with it that concerns us 
here. I am not one of those who decry the 
eighteenth century. That much maligned period 
had its own contribution to make, and it made 
it in its own dispassionate and businesslike way. 
But its needle pointed to the other pole, and its 
ideals were in large degree opposed to those of 
the spacious days that had preceded it. And 
nowhere was this more strikingly true than in 
its poetry. If, then, you will permit me to be 
concrete, I should like to suggest a few things 
that may help to set in clearer light the real 
significance of Robert Burns. 

In the first place, one fundamental article of 
the eighteenth century poetical code was the re- 
pression of passion. Here, for example, are a 
few passages taken wholly at random from the 
poets of the period, which will illustrate what 
I mean : 

Let all be hushed, each softest motion cease, 
Be every loud tumultous thought at peace. 

That happens to be from Congreve lines. On 
Miss Arabella Hunt Singing. Again, in Parnell : 

9 



When thus she spake — Go rule thy will, 
Bid thy wild passions all be still. 

Doctor Johnson, too, strikes the same note : 

Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind, 
Obedient passions, and a will resigned. 

Not otherwise writes Whitehead, in a poem 
called (of all things!) The Enthusiast: 

The tyrant passions all subside. 
Fear, anger, pity, shame and pride 
No more my bosom move. 

I shall add without comment a few more 
examples : 

At helm I make my reason sit, 

My crew of passions all submit (Green) ; 

Content me with an humble shade. 

My passions tamed, my wishes laid (Dyer) ; 

And through the mists of passion and of sense 
To hold his course unfaltering (Akenside) ; 

the virtuous man 

Who keeps his tempered mind serene and pure, 
And every jarring passion aptly harmonized 

(Thomson). 

These are perfectly typical examples of the 
attitude of the times. And it is, of course, a 
sound enough attitude ethically, too. But that 

10 



is not the point. The point is simply this. Sup- 
pose Lear and Hamlet and Othello and Macbeth, 
suppose Oedipus and Tristram and Launcelot 
and Faust had possessed "obedient passions and 
a will resigned"! The question answers itself. 
No ! with all its praiseworthy effort to see things 
as they are, the eighteenth century shut its eyes 
to one of the most fundamental facts of all — to 
those deep-rooted and elemental impulses whose 
clash and often tragic struggle purge and uplift 
through pity and terror. Clever and often 
masterly as its craftsmanship was ; clear-eyed 
and shrewd and sane as many of its judgments 
were, the period hermetically sealed itself against 
the great winds of the spirit. 

But that was not all. Not only was the range 
of human interest notably restricted, but the 
splendid freedom of poetic form that had 
characterized the earlier days was gone as well. 
Upon that superb creature, the spirit of English 
poetry, there was imposed the strait- jacket of 
what was virtually a single metre; the thing 
was cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in, by 
the limits of the decasyllabic couplet. Now one 
may grant at once that to certain purposes no 
instrument could be more exquisitely adapted 
than the heroic couplet. But, as in so many 
instances, the difficulty lay not in the use, but in 
the abuse of the medium; and a measure which 
fits an epigram like a glove is not for that reason 
necessarily adapted to voice the poignant out- 
cry of a tortured soul. But, after all, precisely 
one trouble with the eighteenth century was the 
fact that it didn't greatly vex its soul ; and one 
result of its coolly rationalistic attitude toward 

11 



life, coupled with the influence of the amazing 
craftsmanship of Pope, was a devastating mo- 
notony of heroic couplets, which spread over 
English poetry hke a flood, with only the tip of 
an occasional Ararat projecting above the waves. 
I know I am painting in too broad lines, in too 
high lights ; but this is after dinner, and I am, 
I think, telling the essential truth. 

But still another count has to be added to the 
indictment. For no less fatal than the relentless 
vogue of the couplet was the prevalence of a so- 
called "poetic diction." The age revelled in 
conventional stock terms for things. To call a 
spade by its proper name was like presenting 
oneself in company in puris naturalibus. It is 
all very hke Bottom and Snout and the lion in 
the Midsummer Night's Dream. "To bring in 
a hon," says Bottom, "To bring in— God shield 
us !— a hon among ladies is a most dreadful thing • 
for there is not a more fearful wild fowl th^n' 
your hon living." "Therefore," says Snout 
another prologue must tell that he is not a lion " 
And so, for the benefit of artistic sensibilities 
in the poetry we are considering, the lions roar 
as gently as any sucking doves. The wind is^ 
softened to "the trembling zephyr" or "the 
fragrant gale." Shakespeare's "Cradle of the 
rude imperious surge" becomes "the sprightlv 
flood," or "swelling tide"; a boot is "the shin- 
ing leather that encased the limb"; a pipe is 
'the short tube that fumes beneath the nose " 
Does one make cofifee.? Then. "From silver 
spouts the grateful liquors glide. And China's 
earth receives the smoking tide." Does one 
stab? Why then, one "with steel invades the 



12 



life." In a word, the poetry of the eighteenth 
century was doomed to go in periwig and small 
clothes; the superb forthrightness and direct- 
ness and poignancy of the virile speech of deep 
feeling or compelling passion was to it an un- 
known tongue. 

And in upon all that formalism and conven- 
tion and repression came Robert Burns — "Neither 
eighteenth century nor nineteenth century" (as 
Arthur Symons put it a year or so ago) ; "neither 
local nor temporary, but the very flame of man, 
speaking as a man has only once or twice spoken 
in the world." And now, perhaps, we may see 
more clearly some elements of his significance. 

"The very flame of man" — that puts the essen- 
tial thing, I think, as well, perhaps, as words 
after all can express it. For what one thinks of 
first in Burns's work is its throbbing, pulsing 
life, which fuses at white heat whatever inert 
stuff comes into his alembic. The eighteenth 
century was interested, in its cold methodical 
way, in abstract truth. Burns' passion for 
reality, for the true thing, was like a consuming 
fire, and Holy Willie's Prayer, and the Address 
to the Deil, and the Address to the Unco Guid 
in their trenchant lines strip sham and hypocrisy 
stark naked, and leave them shivering. The 
eighteenth century had its theories, pleasing 
enough, about the rights of man. Burns did 
what Wordsworth rightly insisted every true 
poet must do — he "carried the thing alive into 
the heart by passion," and "A man's a man for 
a' that" — and I should even say The Jolly 
Beggars, too, — is worth all the volumes of ab- 
stract theorizing that preceded it. The eighteenth 

13 



century took little stock in nature. That line 
in The Rape of the Lock — "Sol through white 
curtains shot a timorous ray" — has always 
seemed to me rather engagingly symbolic of the 
whole period; it loved to look at nature, when 
it looked at all, through curtained windows, and 
the couplet was quite large enough for what it 
saw. But to Burns the world of nature, animate 
and inanimate, and the world of human life 
were bone of one bone and flesh of one flesh. 
There could scarcely be two men more essen- 
tially unlike at most points than St, Francis of 
Assissi and Robert Burns, yet at one point there 
is an almost startling kinship between the two. 
Some of you will recall St. Francis's wonder- 
ful Canticle of the Sun : 

"Praised be my Lord God with all his 
creatures ; and especially our brother the sun, 
who brings us the day, and who brings us the 
light ; fair is he, and shining with a very great 
splendor: Oh Lord, he signifies us to Thee. 

"Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, 
and for the stars, the which he has set clear and 
lovely in heaven. 

"Praised be my Lord for our brother the zvind, 
and for air and cloud, calms and all weather, by 
the which thou upholdst in life all creatures. 

"Praised be my Lord for our sister water, 
who is very serviceable to us, and humble, and 
precious, and clean. 

"Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, 
through whom thou givest us light in the dark- 
ness; and he is bright, and pleasant, and very 
mighty and strong." 

14 



It is that same vivid sense of the brotherhood 
of all things that are, that is Burns's avithentic 
note: 

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, 
O, M^hat a panic's in thy breastie ! 
Thou need na start awa sae hasty, 

Wi' bickering brattle ! 
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee, 

Wi' murd'ring pattle ! . . . 

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin ! 
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin ! 
An' naething, now, to big a new ane, 

O' foggage green ! 

An' bleak December's winds ensuin, 
Baith snell an' keen! 

The eighteenth century was little disturbed bj 
love. It could "die of a rose in aromatic pain" 
— but it died in an epigram! The passion that 
surged through the Elizabethan and Jacobean 
lyrics and plays had beat itself out; in Pope's 
hands even the tragic agony of Eloisa and Abe- 
lard is softened into a mild regret; the theme 
is played on muted strings. Nobody sang in 
those days as when, in the greater days before, 
"wild music burthened every bough." One 
doesn't sing satire and epigram and critique. 
But with Burns human passion came again to 
its own. For, strange as it is, it is no less 
true, that it isn't what men think, but what they 
feel that lasts. What Thales and all the Seven 
Sages thought out "mit Miihe und Not" is as 
obsolete as the implements forged by Tubal Cain, 

15 



while Sapho's handful of mutilated, fragmentary 
lines that have survived are contemporary with 
Shelley and with Poe, And in Burns this same 
elemental human note makes itself heard again. 
Imagine Dryden or Pope or Doctor Johnson, 
or even Goldsmith or Gray or Cowper writing: 

"O, my love's like a red, red rose, 
That's newly sprung in June !" 

And that brings us to another thing. 

New wine won't go into old bottles — and here, 
emphatically, was new wine. What was to hap- 
pen? Well, that happened which has happened 
again and again. It happened when, with only the 
measured, balanced cadences of classical prosody 
to express it, there came into the world that 
passionate thing — for that certainly is what it 
was — that found its most marvelous expression 
in the close of the eighth chapter of the letter 
to the Romans. Could that find room in the 
stately, serene hexameters of Virgil, or in the 
graceful stanzas of the Horatian ode? It 
couldn't, and it didn't; it beat its own music 
out, and we have, as the result of it, the 
poignant, plangent measures of the Latin hymns. 
The new and deeper passion had forged for it- 
self a new and marvelous measure, that has in- 
fluenced the poets ever since. Could Beethoven's 
stormy and tragic meaning cramp itself within 
the conventional rondo of Hayden or even 
Mozart? Play one of these, and then listen to 
the scherzos — the same fundamental form, but 
qiiatn mutatus ab illo! — the scherzos of the great 
symphonies, with their rollicking gayety, grim 
16 



mystery, and tragic portent. And so, When 
Burns appeared, the day of the heroic couplet 
was done — done because the winged, flame-Hke 
thing he brought could not be caged within it, 
any more than Lear's ravings, or the sea-music 
of Pericles, or the something rich and strange 
of the Tempest could be put in Shakespeare's 
earlier blank verse. 

And as he brought freedom of rhythm once 
more, so with him came back again to English 
poetry a diction, fresh and masculine and vigor- 
ous. "Paul's words," said Luther, "are alive: 
they have hands and feet; if you cut them they 
bleed." And Burns's words are no less alive, 
and they are besides racy with the tang of the 
soil. They are like the speech that Montaigne 
loved: "It is a natural, simple, and unaffected 
speech that I love," wrote Montaigne, "so 
written as it is spoken, and such upon the paper 
as it is in the mouth, a pithie, sinnowie, full, 
strong, compendious and material speech." And 
with Tam O'Shanter, far more than with Words- 
worth's amiable experiments, the reign of the old 
poetic diction was at an end. 

"The very flame of man speaking as a man has 
only spoken once or twice in the world" — that 
was Robert Burns. And this authentic speech 
of his proclaimed for English poetry the dawn 
of a new day. 



17 




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Midway in a mile of St. Louis culture stands the 
quaint Artists' Guild. This mile begins with the 
monumental entrances of Westmoreland and Portland 
Places, through which are vistas of parking between 
double drives bordered by mansions. Then come 
towering apartment houses of the highest class. A 
few steps farther, on the left, are the great gateways of 
Kingsbury Place and Washington Terrace, while east- 
ward Westminster and Washington Boulevards seem- 
ingly narrow in the distance to lanes with overhang- 
ing trees. Beyond is a group of churches, varied in 
architecture and creed — Christian, Unitarian and Con- 
gregational. Sandwiched between two of them is this 
club house and art gallery of the Artists' Guild, the 
home of the Burns Club and of tlie Franklin Club. 
In close alignment are the Soldan High School and 
the William Clark Grammar School, latest and best 
of public school architecture and equipment in the 
country. Clustered opposite and in the immediate 
vicinity are the Smith Academy and the Manual Train- 
ing School of Washington University and two of the 
academies of the Catholic sisterhoods — Visitation and 
St. Philomena. Windermere and Cabanne Places, with 
their fine residences, are laterals. Cabanne Library, 
the Model Police Station and the great St. Ann Asylum 
complete this mile of St. Louis culture. Well-named 
Union Avenue ! What a fitting center for a shrine to 
Robert Burns ! 



19 



Like unto Isaiah, Judge Moses N. Sale compared 
Burns when the Club observed the 151st anniversary of 
the birth of the poet. He found in Burns the gift of 
tongues and of prophesy for men of every clime and 
all times. He drew parallels between the words of the 
ancient prophet in Israel and those of him who 
"scotched" the Pharisees, the "unco guid" of a later 
generation. He rebuked in scathing terms those who 
question the religious nature of Burns and who see 
in the "Cotter's Saturday Night" and other Burns 
poems of like nature only "recoil from excesses oi 
the flesh." The straight-from-the-shoulder sentences 
of Judge Sale found quick-answering echo in stand- 
ing vote of the Club, and in the first suggestion to print 
this volume of Burns Nights in St. Louis. 



20 



BURNS, THE PROPHET. 

By Moses N. Sale, 
Late Judge of the Circuit Court of St. Louis, 

January 25, ]910. 

My apology is due to the members of the 
club for reading from my manuscript on this 
occasion. I might tell you, and you would 
doubtless believe me, that the duties of office 
and a self-assumed obligation to a body of young 
men, anxious to improve themselves as lawyers, 
have not given me the time since I was notified 
by our secretary, of the part assigned to me on 
this occasion. These reasons would form a 
durable foundation for my apology, and they 
certainly bear the appearance of being solid. 
They seem to me to be apparently valid excuses 
for my not being able to deliver to you an ex- 
temporaneous address, conceived on the spur of 
the moment and inspired by the occasion itself, 
after days of deliberation. These reasons, how- 
ever, are apparent and not real. Stage fright, a 
form of nervousness, known to those learned in 
medical jargon as "amnesic aphasia" — the chief 
symptom of which is the inability on the part of 
the patient to call to mind the exact word he 
wants, although recognizing it and able to pro- 
nounce it when found or when suggested. This 
is the real reason for my putting on paper, my 
thoughts, concerning Scotland's greatest poet, 
and one of the world's great poets. I hope you 
will detect, concealed in that reason, my great 
respect for the members of the Burns Club. 
21 



Before entering, however, on the subject as- 
signed to me, there is another matter which has 
long lain on my mind, and which has troubled 
me no little. I disavow sincerely and earnestly 
any desire to pose as a reformer or to act as a 
censor in matters of social etiquette; yet it 
strikes me that on occasions of this kind, chaos 
is substituted for cosmos. Like him whose 
birthday we celebrate this evening, I am ordinar- 
ily a sociable animal ; I enjoy the good things 
of life that so sparingly fall to my lot, but I find 
it beyond me altogether to be my natural self, 
I find it impossible to be sociable, to enjoy my- 
self and to contribute my share to the enjoyment 
of others when I sit down to a table laden with 
good things to whet and satisfy the appetite, 
knowing all the while that the sword of Damocles 
hangs over my head ready to drop at the word 
of the presiding genius. Foreknowledge of com- 
ing events on those occasions aggravates every 
symptom of my disease; and I am, therefore, 
driven to the necessity of putting my words on 
paper in order to make myself intelligible. If 
I permit my dirt-self to enjoy the eating and 
drinking, I do so at the expense of my psychic- 
self. I always envied the man, who, knowing 
he was to be called upon after his dinner for a 
speech, could yet enjoy himself as fully and 
freely as if nothing direful was impending. I 
confess that on these occasions my bodily and 
my mental self get into a fracas, and I am un- 
able to extricate the one from the other until I 
am on my way home, walking in the cool of the 
night air, when my mental-self reasserts its 
dominion, and I recall to mind the splendid 
22 



speech I had intended to make, but forgot; and 
then I see all too clearly, what a glorious op- 
portunity I missed of talking myself into local 
fame. This confession, publicly made, together 
with the slight pressure of official work, and my 
profound respect for the Burns Club, are my 
justification for reading my address. 

I want to make the suggestion now to mem- 
bers of the Burns Club, that hereafter, at these 
annual commemorations, the order of business 
be so changed as to make it possible for the 
speakers to enjoy the dinner by giving them 
the opportunity of emptying themselves of their 
speeches, so as to make room for the dinner. 
Speeches first, dinner next. 

May I not modestly ask, "What was I or my 
generation that I should get sic exaltation" as 
to be selected by the club for the honor of speak- 
ing to you of Robert Burns on the 151st an- 
niversary of his birth? I am honored beyond 
my meed. I have frequently spoken in terms of 
profound admiration of the work of Burns and 
of my deep sympathy with his short and wonder- 
ful career. I have thus spoken in the presence of 
some of my friends, who were so fortunate as to 
have been born in Scotland or descended from 
Scotch ancestors, and doubtless my talking in 
such presence is responsible for my plight to- 
night. 

1 cannot now recall when I first began to read 
Burns. Except in a general way I cannot now 
say what first attracted or drew me towards him. 
I do know what continues to draw me in that 
direction and what will hold me fast to him as 
a friend so long as life continues. I am not quite 

23 



sure, but I am inclined to believe that his Ode 
to Poverty was the first of his minor poems 
-w hich I read or heard read, and I was so charmed 
with its truth and earnestness that I began to 
read and study the poet. The Doric dialect of 
South Scotland, in which Burns wrote, only in- 
creased the charm of his writing for me. The 
more of him I read the more I wanted to read; 
the stronger grew my admiration as 1 read, and 
my love for him as an older brother, who suffered 
much, who endured poverty and hardship, an 1 
yet during his all too brief life set beacon lights 
along the path of human life, to warn his fellow 
men of the pit-falls into which he, himself, had 
so frequently fallen. 

My slight knowledge of the German language 
made it easier for me to understand the Scotch 
dialect, I always found an exquisite pleasure in 
tracing the wandering of words from people to 
people, from language to language. History 
furnishes no stronger proof than language that 
the time was when man to man the world o'er 
were brothers. The poet says: "Go fetch to me 
a pint of wine, and fill it in a silver tassie." 
"Tassie" is the German "tasse," English "cup." 
In the song of Burns where the young lassie con- 
siders what she could best do with her auld man, 
the young wife complains that "he hosts and he 
hirples;" "Hosts" is the German "Husten," to 
cough. You remember "That sark she coft for 
her wee Nannie." "Coft" is the German 
"kaufen," to buy. I rede ye — rede, the German 
"rede" — English, speech or discourse. "May 
you better reck the rede than ever did the ad- 
viser." "Reck" is the German "rechen," which 
24 



means to count or calculate. "Skaith," Scotch — 
for injury, is the German word "schade." ("The 
Deil he could na skaith thee") as the Scotch 
"blate" is the German "bloede;" — "sicker" — se- 
cure ; — "unsicker" — insecure — German sicher. 
"Geek" — {"ye geek at me because I'm poor") — 
German gucken. The Cotter "zvales" a portion 
of the big Ha' Bible, with judicious care — Ger- 
man Wahlen — choose. 

These are simply illustrations of what to me 
was an additional charm in the language of 
Burns. Burns has sung himself into the hearts 
of men and women the world over, and he will 
remain there enshrined until time is no more. 
Every great poet is a prophet. Burns was such. 
"He smote the earth with the rod of his mouth, 
and with the breath of his lips did he slay the 
wicked." He had a message to deliver. He ex- 
pressed it throughout his poems in manifold 
ways. 

In the ode to General Washington's birthday, 
he expresses it thus : 
"But come ye Sons of Liberty, 
Columbia's offspring, brave as free. 
In danger's hour still flaming in the van. 
Ye know, and dare maintain the Royalty of Man." 
and again : 

"Is there for honest poverty 
That hangs his head an' a' that 
The coward slave — we pass him bv, 
We dare be poor for a' that! 
For a' that, an' a' that. 
Our toils obscure an' a' that, 
The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
The man's the gozvd for a' that." 

25 



The pith of sense and pride of worth, the 
genuine in man as against cant and hypocrisy, 
the false in man, are the chief notes of his song. 
In a broad sense, he sang and taught the worth 
of man ; that life is worth the living, if lived 
worthily. 

As his great countryman expresses it: 

"To the ill-starred Burns was given the power 
of making man's life more venerable, but that 
of wisely guiding his own life was not given," 

You may sing loud and you may sing long, 
but unless there is sweetness and truth — I should 
say the sweetness of truth — in the voice that 
sings, the louder you sing, the smaller will your 
audience become until it dwindles to the singer 
alone. 

That Burns sang the truth sweetly, is not only 
demonstratable from his own writings, but is like- 
wise proven by his constantly growing audience. 

Commencing, as he did, with a few peasant 
listeners in his Ayrshire home, he had before his 
death an audience wide as the confines of the 
English language, which since his death has 
swollen into a loving and reverent audience, em- 
bracing the civilized world wherever an articu- 
late tongue is spoken. His poems have been 
translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, 
Dutch, Danish, Hungarian, Swiss and even into 
Latin verse — aye, even into Russian ; and who 
knows, but that the leaven of his cry for the 
royalty, the worth of man — as man, is to-day 
working in that semi-civilized country, teaching 
the Russian peasant that it is man's inhumanity 
to man makes countless thousands mourn, and 
that the pith of sense and pride of worth are 
higher rank than a belted knight. 

26 



In 1786 the first edition of his poems was pub- 
lished, known as "The Kilmarnock Edition." 
Every year since that memorable year, 1786, al- 
most without exception, somewhere among the 
sons of men whom Burns so loved, some volume 
by Burns or concerning him has been published, 
and in some of those years many volumes were 
published, until now the bibliography of Burns, 
things written by and of him, in the various 
quarters of the globe, including only single copies 
of each edition of such publications, would con- 
stitute a library of more than one thousand 
volumes. 

What does all this mean? It can have only 
one significance, and that is, that Burns had a 
world-wide message to deliver, which men were 
eager to hear, and for which the human soul 
hungered ; that his message was true and came 
from the heart of one man to the hearts of his 
fellow-men, not only to his fellow-Scot, but to 
his fellow-man the world over. 

If it could ever be said truthfully of any poet 
in any language, it must be said of Burns that 
he, indeed, "found tongues in trees, books in the 
running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in 
everything." Notwithstanding the truth of this 
assertion it may not be unbecoming in me to 
say, since the local press has been discussing a 
censorship of the stage, that our own beloved 
poet would have been put in the index libronim 
prohihitortim or at least in the index expurga- 
torins long, long ago, if orthodoxy had its way; 
and this is quite evident from a pamphlet pub- 
lished in 181 1 entitled, "Burnsiana, addressed to 
real christians of every denomination," by the 

27 



Rev. William Peebles, and another pamphlet 
published in 1869, entitled, "Should Christians 
commemorate the birthday of Robert Burns," by 
the Rev, Fergus Ferguson. I have never read, 
nor have I ever seen a copy of either of these 
oblivion-seeking publications ; and the publica- 
tions, except to the curious students of Burns, 
have dropped where they belong, into "the in- 
satiate maw of oblivion" ; but if there had been 
a censorship of the press in Burns' day, Burns 
would have been barred. The very names of 
Rev. Fergus Ferguson and the Rev. William 
Peebles sound strange to our ears, and except 
for the fact that each of these reverend gentle- 
men, during a long and useful life, wrote a mono- 
graph upon a subject connected with the name 
of Robert Burns, they would now be buried so 
deep in the bottomless pit of oblivion that the 
trumpet of the Angel Gabriel would not disturb 
their rest. 

In 1859 a chronicle of the hundredth birthday 
of Burns was published at Edinburgh, contain- 
ing an account of more than eight hundred meet- 
ings held in various parts of the English-speak- 
ing world, together with the most important 
speeches delivered at such meetings. Here one 
hundred years after the birth of Burns was an 
answer to the Rev. Fergus Ferguson, an answer 
unanimously in the affirmative, that Christians — 
genuine Christians — not necessarily those who 
wear the garb of sanctity, should commemorate 
the birthday of Robert Burns, and in behalf of 
at least a portion of the non-Christian population 
of the universe, I affirm that the Jews should 
likewise commemorate the birthday of Robert 
28 



Burns; Robert Burns was a prophet in Israel, 
and like a veritable prophet, he speaks to the 
genuine man of every clime and all times, to all 
those who answer in the affirmative, the ques- 
tions, "Have we not all one Father?" "Hath 
not one God created us all?" Cunning and 
hypocrisy had invaded the Church of Scotland 
in Burns' day, as they had churches in other 
days, and as they will continue to invade the 
church in yet other days. Burns had little pa- 
tience with public censors — those who had 
"naught to do but mark and tell their neighbors' 
faults and follies." Every age is afflicted with the 
pestiferous censor — the man who wants to cut 
and determine for his supposed weaker brothers, 
the pattern of a moral life ; unfortunately these 
pattern makers do little else than make patterns. 
Now, a pattern is in and of itself worthless, un- 
less you fashion something useful by means of 
it. The iron-worker uses his mold, but you can't 
use the mold or pattern for building a structure 
and if the iron-worker did no more than make 
patterns, he would live a very useless life. He 
must do something with his pattern, he must 
make articles of utility or of beauty, and if he 
did nothing more than stand idly by and criticise 
the work of others he is fulfilling not the purpose 
of the creator — who only criticised his own work, 
and that after it was completed and done — but 
he is following the example of old Hornie, Satan, 
Nick or Clootie, whatever his title may be — 
creating nothing, but always seeking "to scaud 
poor wretches." 

Burns scotched the Pharisees, the rigidly 
righteous of his day — the attendants at the 

29 



solemn meetings — those, who "for a pretence 
make long prayers"; as did Isaiah his hypo- 
critical contemporaries; as Jesus of Nazareth 
flayed the same everlasting species in his day. 
"The blind guides which strain at a gnat, and 
swallow a camel" — "the hypocrites who pay their 
tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and omit 
the weightier matters of the law"; "those who 
do all their work for to be seen of men," "those 
who sit in the chief seats of the synagogues," 
who occupy the front pews, the choice pews of 
the church — those in short, who have "devo- 
tions' every grace, except the heart" — these, all 
these and their name is legion, were scourged by 
Burns with true prophetic fire — and these self- 
same Scribes and Pharisees are those who speak 
and write of Burns' irreligiousness. A brother 
prophet in Israel had sung: 

"The ox knozveth its ozvner, and the ass his 
master's crib; but Israel doth not knozv; my 
people doth not consider." 

"Bring no more vain oblations," sang Isaiah. 
"Incense is an abomination unto inc. The new 
moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies 
(church meetings) I cannot endure. It is in- 
iquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moon 
and your appointed feasts my soid hateth. They 
are a trouble unto me; I am zveary to bear them. 
And when you spread forth your hands I zvill 
hide mine eyes from you; yea, when you make 
many prayers I will not hear. Your hands are 
full of blood, zvash ye! Make yourselves clean; 
Put away the evil of your doings from before 
mine eyes; Cease to do evil; Learn to do zvell; 
Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the 

20 



fatherless, plead for the widow. The princes are 
rebellions and companions of thieves. Everyone 
loves gifts and followeth after rezvards. (Just 
as the boodlers of our day.) They judge not 
the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the 
widow come unto them." 

Thus sang the old Hebrew prophet. It is 
easily imaginable that if we had all that was 
written by some of the orthodox ministers, (some 
of the "unco guid") of and concerning Isaiah, 
there would be found among the lot one with 
the title page, "Should Israelites commemorate 
the birth-day of Isaiah?" 

Burns might have written the foregoing quota- 
tion from Isaiah. He did write so many like 
it that the preachers in his day thought doubt- 
less — as the priests did of Isaiah, that Burns was 
irreligious. Many so-called critics of Burns at- 
tribute his attacks on the church to motives of 
personal rancor; but how little they understand 
the poet! The true poet sees the very soul of 
things. The rottenness was in the church, and 
it was this corruption, this humbug and hy- 
pocrisy within the church that stirred the ire 
of Burns as it stirred the soul of the ancient 
prophet under similar circumstances in the re- 
ligion of Israel. 

Burns had no patience with the new moon, the 
sabbath, the appointed feasts, the solemn meet- 
ings, and the many prayers uttered from the 
lips. They were to him as they were to Isaiah 
an abomination, because, in the language of 
Burns, these things were done : 
31 



"In all the pomp of method and of art, 
When men display to congregations wide, 
Devotion's every grace, except the heart. 

He had no patience with such lip service, but 
that he was devoutly truly religious, his poems 
abundantly prove. No one can read "The Cot- 
ter's Saturday Night," which contains that 
beautiful description of religious life in the home 
of the poor peasant — his own father's home — 
without feeling that Burns was essentially and 
truly religious. 

In his epistle to the Rev. John McMath, he 
says: 

"I gae mad at their grimaces. 
Their sigh'n, cantin' grace — proud faces, 
Their three-mile prayers and half-mile graces." 

And in this same epistle he apostrophizes thus : 

"All Hail, Religion, Maid Divine, 
Pardon a muse so mean as mine, 
Who in her rough, imperfect line, 
Thus dares to name thee. 
To stigmatize false friends of thine, 
Can ne'er defame thee." 

It seems to me quite obvious that Burns, like 
the earlier prophets was fighting the devil and 
his imps, even though such imps were dressed 
in cloth and wore the livery of heaven. It 
seems to me that he was only proving how truly 
religious he was when fighting and opposing, 
tooth and nail, as he always did, sham and cant, 
and those, as he puts it, 
■32 



"Who take Religion in their month, hut never 
have it elsewhere." 

This seems so plain to me that it is hard for 
me, not wearing orthodoxy's hood, to under- 
stand how anyone could ever have questioned 
Burns' religious nature. If Burns had never 
known and felt the purity and holiness of re- 
ligion, if he had never known religion in its 
reality, he could never have satirized its bastard 
offspring as he did in "The Holy Tulyie," "Holy 
Willie's Prayer," "The Holy Fair," and the 
address to the "Unco Guid." If his own re- 
ligious feeling was not genuine, whence came 
his burning indignation at the "false sighin', 
cantin', grace-proud faces, three-mile prayers 
and half-mile graces." 

Burns did not believe in the orthodox Hell, 
nor in the doctrine of eternal damnation as 
taught by the church; 

"The fear o' Hell's a hangman's whip. 
To baud the wretch in order, 
But where ye feel your Honor grip, 
Let that ay be your border." 

I conclude by calling your attention to a 
scurvy screed written by Elbert Hubbard, a king 
among fakirs, who makes books for a living. 
The screed is one of his little journeys, entitled 
"Robert Burns." It should be entitled "Elbert 
Hubbard," for, it is evidently evolved from his 
inner consciousness, is not based on the life and 
work of Burns, and is so palpably an effort on 
the part of Hubbard to drag the gifted Burns 
33 



down to his own level that the pamphlet is posi- 
tively disgusting. It is so flattering to a small 
soul to find that Burns went a kennin wrang, but 
the poor fellow whose morals are so frayed and 
tattered, and whose vision is so blurred and 
dimmed as to be able to see in the "Cotter's 
Saturday Night" only a tip to t'other side, that 
is, the side of excess and vice, is, indeed, to be 
pitied. This poem, Hubbard says, was written 
after a debauch, just as after a debauch a man 
might sign a pledge and swear off, and that this 
is true of all of Burns' religious poems. This 
great critic at East Aurora says that all of Burns' 
religious poems were simply a recoil from ex- 
cesses of the flesh ; and thus hath another self- 
appointed commentator on Burns damned him- 
self out of his own mouth. 

Burns has been criticised, his life and his life's 
work discussed by a number of the British es- 
sayists, including Lord Jeffrey, Christopher 
North, Thomas Carlyle and Robert Louis 
Stevenson ; his work as a poet has been dis- 
cussed by professors of universities, bearing all 
kinds of degrees, and it remains for this wise 
man at East Aurora, in the State of New York, - 
to discover the real origin of Burns' greatness 
as a poet. 

Christopher North, in his "Recreations," said 
of Burns : "When he sings, it is like listening to 
a linnet in the broom, a blackbird in the brake, 
a laverock in the sky; they sing in the fullness 
of their joy, as nature teaches them ; and so did 
he ; and the man, woman or child, who is de- 
lighted not with such singing, be their virtues 
what they may, must never hope to be in Heaven." 

34 



And so I may well say of the man who in all 
seriousness writes and publishes in this day and 
generation that the "Cotter's Saturday Night" 
is the result of a debauch, he can never hope to 
escape Hell — he is already there. 



35 




tt. 



y s 



The Burns Club of St. Louis is rich in Burnsiana. 
Among the relics which furnish the unique club room 
are a table which was owned by Burns when he lived 
at Dumfries, a table from the Tarn O'Shanter inn, 
a third table made of wood from St. Michael's church 
at Dumfries, a little chair which was the favorite seat 
of Burns in his childhood, another chair from the 
cottage in Ayr and the old arm chair of Mrs. Tam 
O'Shanter, 

Where sits our sulky, sullen dame, 
Gathering her brows like gathering storm. 
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. 

The great chimney and fireplace at one end of the 
long club room provide the ingle-nook which is oc- 
cupied by an old spinning wheel and reel of the Armour 
family. On the opposite side is the "dresser" or side- 
board with an array of the Club's tableware — quaint 
bowls and plates and ashets. 

Upon the mantel, over the fireplace, are candlesticks 
of Burns' time, and near by hang "Bonnie Jean's" 
iron holder and the "girdle" on which the cakes were 
baked. "Bonnie Jean's" milking stool, a cupboard and 
table which belonged to a family where Burns visited 
much, a chair that was used often by the poet, and 
the eight-day clock one hundred and thirty years old 
give atmosphere to this home of the Burns Club of St. 
Louis. 

The halls of the chamber are hung with reminders 
of Burns. There are the original drawings made by 
John Burnet to illustrate Tam O'Shanter, an oil paint- 
ing of the Burns Cottage at the World's Fair, facsimiles 
of many of the best known poems of Burns in his hand- 
writing, prints and sketches of Scottish scenes made 
familiar by the poet. 

No Burns Night in St. Louis passes without additions 
to this already notable collection of Burnsiana. 



37 



Chang Yow Tong, of the Chinese Imperial Com- 
mission, wrote "Human Progress as Shown at the 
World's Fair in St. Louis." He dedicated his volume 
of graceful verse "To Universal Peace." The opening 
of the Exposition drew from him "China's Message to 
Columbia." The dedication of the Burns Cottage was 
on the 24th of June, 1904, which was Bannockburn 
Battle day. Sir Hugh Gilzean-Reid, president of the 
World's Press Parliament, delivered the address. 
Among the guests was Chang Yow Tong who was 
inspired by the occasion to write his "Lines to Burns." 



38 



LINES TO BURNS. 

By Chang Yow Tong, 

Chinese Imperial Commissioner, 

Inspired by the Burns Cottage, World's Fair, 1904. 

O! kindred soul of humble birth, 
Divine, though of the lowly earth, 
Forgotten thou art not to-day, 
Nor yet neglected — here's thy bay! 

Thy cottage-home, hid from the proud. 
Nor thought of by the vulgar crowd, 
In thine own time has claimed a place 
On which the world's eyes now gaze. 

Nor changed its homely, rugged lines, 
Where closely crept thy tender vines ; 
But men have changed : nor yet deplore — 
Where once they spurned we now adore. 

Thy life and work and destiny 
Contain a meaning deep for me ; — 
Though fame be darkened by a fate, 
The laurel-wreath comes soon or late. 

Thy splendid fame shall ever rise 
With undimm'd glory o'er the skies ;— 
To struggling souls a hope shall yield 
On sailing seas and ploughing field. 

I am a foreign, unknown bard. 
Whose devious course is rough and hard ; 
But cheered at times by thy sweet song, 
I sing away, nor mind the throng. 

Like thee, I'll toil with manly hand. 

Like thee, by manhood ever stand; 

And, guided by thy spirit brave, 

Shall wait for verdict at the grave. 

— Chang Yow Tong. 
39 



Scottish Day at the World's Fair was celebrated 
August 15, 1904, the anniversary of the birth of Sir 
Walter Scott. A company of Highlanders escorted 
other Scottish organizations of St. Louis through the 
grounds to the Burns Cottage where President David 
R. Francis extended a welcome in behalf of the Ex- 
position management. W. R. Smith, curator of the 
Botanical Gardens at Washington, a lover of Burns, of 
international fame, responded. The Scottish flag was 
raised. Auld Lang Syne was sung. In the Hall of 
Congresses, the celebration was continued, with Joseph 
A. Graham presiding. A poem on Robert Burns, by 
Willis Leonard McClanahan, was read by Maye Mc- 
Camish Hedrick. Ingersoll's tribute to "The Place 
Where Burns was Born" was read. Frederick W. 
Lehmann, a member of the Exposition board and chair- 
man of the committee on International Congresses, 
since appointed solicitor general of the United States, 
delivered the address. 



40 



BURNS OF THE "AULD CLAY 
BIGGIN." 

By Frederick W. Lehmann, 
Solicitor General of the United States, 

Scottish Day. August 15. 1904. 

Among the many structures which have been 
reared upon these grounds to illustrate the 
achievements, during a hundred years, of a free 
people in a free land, none has more rightful 
place than that which so faithfully represents the 
"auld clay biggin" in which Robert Burns was 
born. Called untimely from this life ere yet the 
language in which he wrote was heard here, 
though he himself had never set foot beyond the 
borders of his own country, the rich fruitage of 
his genius is none the less a part of the heritage 
of our people. Throughout the poetry of Burns 
breathes the spirit of our institutions, the Declara- 
tion of Independence, the Proclamation of Eman- 
cipation, and here we have endeavored to realize, 
as nearly as human effort may, the great truth 
that 

"The rank is but the guinea's stamp 
The man's the gowd for a' that." 

The artificial verse of modern pessimism has 
given us a description of the "man with the hoe," 
which Burns would not have accepted as a por- 
trait. When he wrote his "Cotter's Saturday 
Night," he drew his inspiration not from a 
foreign canvas, but from his own experience. 
The cotter he describes was his own father, and 
of the children who knelt at the ingleside to join 
41 



in the worship of God, Robert was one. The 
cotter of Burns' inspiring and upHfting poem 
toiled as hard as ever did Markham's man with 
the hoe, but he was not a dull soulless clod ; the 
light of intelligence was in his eye and the fervor 
of ambition was in his breast. He had been little 
at school, but he was an educated man. His 
books were few, but he read and re-read them 
until he made their learning and wisdom his own. 
He had strong convictions concerning his posi- 
tion in the order of the universe, and his sense of 
nearness to God prevented his abasement in the 
sight of his fellowmen. As his life darkened to 
its close, the hope that he had for himself he re- 
tained for his children, and to the utmost of his 
ability he strove to fit them for whatever place 
they might be called to by duty or opportunity. 

At five years of age Robert was sent to school 
at Alloway Mill, and later the father joined with 
four of his neighbors to hire a teacher for their 
children. These early years were well employed. 
Every moment that could be spared from work 
was spent in study. He read, not only his school 
books, but Shakespeare, the Spectator, Pope, 
Ramsay, and above all, a collection of old 
Scottish songs. "I pored over them." said he, 
"driving my cart, or walking to labor, song by 
song, verse by verse, carefully noting the true, 
tender or sublime, from affectation and fustian. I 
am convinced I owe to this practice much of my 
critic craft, such as it is." His mother was 
learned in the legends and ballads of her 
country, and she brightened the evenings of her 
humble home by recounting them to her 
children. 

42 



There was little variety in this hfe. It was 
strenuous in its labor and its study, and simple 
in its recreations. Its burdens were hard to be 
borne. This showed itself in the early stoop of 
the poet's shoulders, in his frequent sickness and 
moods of melancholy. But it was not always 
dark. He found a charm in the books he pored 
over so greedily, and a profound pleasure in the 
companionships which the work and the play of 
the countryside brought him. 

Much has been written concerning his habits 
during the years of his early manhood, but the 
testimony of those who had the best opportuni- 
ties for observation is that he was not a dissipated 
man. Indeed, his time must in the main have 
been well spent. His letters and his conversa- 
tion showed him to be a man of culture, as surely 
as his poems showed him to be a man of genius. 
At the age of twenty-seven, when the mode of his 
life had changed but little, and certainly not for 
the better, he went from his farm life in Ayrshire 
to spend a winter in Edinburgh with the highest 
fashion of that city, and he towered like Saul 
among his brethren in a company made up of men 
like Dugald Stewart and Hugh Blair. He was 
the center of attraction at every hospitable board, 
not as a spectacle of nine days' wonder, but as a 
companion of inspiring presence, not alone to set 
the table in a roar, but as a man learned among 
scholars and wise among sages. Into the gay as- 
semblies of the city where the Duchess of Gordon 
held sway, he came as a gentleman, and the 
Duchess herself had to acknowledge that there 
was no resisting the charm and fascination of his 
manner. And yet what acquirements and ac- 

43 



complishments he had, he got from his farm life, 
and from that he got all the inspiration of his 
muse. In no spirit of mock humility did he tell 
the gentlemen of the Caledonia Hunt that the 
muse of his country found him at the plough tail. 
There she found him, and hardly ever seems she 
to have sought him elsewhere. It is wonderful 
how little impress his winter in Edinburgh made 
upon his verse. It may have led him to look a 
little more to smoothness and polish, but he got 
from it no inspiration. 

The poet, we were told long ago, is born and 
not made. We look in vain into the birth and 
circumstances of the world's greatest children for 
an explanation of their genius. The unlettered 
Homer was the great bard of Greece. From 
among the humblest dwellers on the Avon came 
the master spirit of our drama, who made the 
passions of princes and the ambitions of kings the 
sport of his genius. And from a clay cot near the 
banks of the Doon the world has gotten its 
sweetest heritage of song. 

Before Burns was fifteen years old, his powers 
displayed themselves. In the labors of the har- 
vest his partner was a beautiful girl a year 
younger than himself, and she instilled in him, 
he tells us, "that delicious passion, which in spite 
of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and 
book-worm philosophy, I hold to be first of 

human joys Among her love-inspiring 

qualities she sang sweetly; and it was her 
favorite reel to which I attempted giving an em- 
bodied vehicle in rhyme Thus with me 

began love and poetry." 
44 



To the gude-wife of Wauchope House he wrote 
in after years, 

"When first among the yellow corn 

A man I reckoned was, 
An' wi' the lave ilk merry morn 
Could rank my rig and lass, 



E'en then a wish, I mind its power, 
O wish that to my latest hour 
Shall strongly heave my breast, 
That I for puir auld Scotland's sake 
Some useful plan or buik might make, 
Or sing a sang at least." 

He wrote for years, but without publishing, 
and such currency as his poems had they got 
through the circulation of manuscript copies 
from hand to hand. His reputation grew 
throughout the countryside. While most of his 
verses were in praise of his fair friends, some of 
them were bitter lampoons and biting satires 
upon those he conceived to be his enemies, and 
so, while he was loved by some, he was feared 
and consequently hated by others. In the re- 
ligious controversies between the Old Light and 
the New, he took a free part, and there was 
more than one to harbor resentment for his Holy 
Fair and Holy Willie's Prayer, and bide his time 
to indulge it. 

Nor had they long to wait. Burns was soon 
involved in difficulties from which he saw no 
escape save in flight. He determined to quit 
45 



Scotland and to try his fortune in the West In- 
dies. To acquire the means of doing this, and 
to leave some remembrance of himself in his 
native land, he ventured upon a publication of 
his poems. 

In June of 1786, he attended, as he believed, 
for the last time, the meeting of the Masonic 
Lodge at Tarbolton, and taking his farewell of 
them he concluded. 

"A last request permit me here, 
When yearly ye assemble a' 
One round, I ask it with a tear, 
To him, the bard, that's far awa." 

Never was parting prayer more richly answered. 
The children and the children's children of those 
who met with him at Tarbolton have been gath- 
ered to their fathers, and still throughout all Scot- 
land and in far distant places, wherever Scotia's 
sons and daughters have wandered, men and 
women yearly gather to pay the richest meed 
that genius can win, — the tribute of their affec- 
tions to his memory. 

Old Fletcher of Saltown said that "if a man 
were permitted to make all the ballads, he need 
not care who should make the laws of a nation." 
Burns wrote the songs, not only of Scotland, but 
of every English speaking nation, of countries 
yet unpeopled when he wrote. 

The Kilmarnock edition was published in 1786, 
when he was twenty-seven years old. The popu- 
larity of the book was great and instant, and yet 
he realized from it the meagre sum of twenty 
pounds, not much more than enough to pay his 

46 



expected passage to Jamaica, and less than one- 
fifth of what would be paid for a single copy of 
it at the present time. It is not to be wondered 
at, that with such reward for such work, he was 
frequently embarrassed and often in despondent 
mood. He had an aversion to debt amounting to 
horror, and all his life he was fighting against it. 
People blamed his want of thrift and his habits 
of life; it might have served better to extend 
now and again a helping hand. 

The reception with which the little volume met 
determined him to stay at home, and to pubHsh 
a second edition of the book. The printer was 
willing to risk the expense of the printing, but 
he insisted on being guaranteed the cost of the 
paper ; and for this the meagre profits of the first 
edition were altogether insufficient. 

But now his fame was not confined to Ayrshire, 
and his ambitious hopes led him to the larger 
field of the capital. The friends he made there 
came to his assistance, and the subscriptions, led 
by the members of the Caledonian Hunt, gave 
assurance of success in advance. Five hundred 
pounds were the rewards of this venture, not 
secured, however, without great delay and diffi- 
culty, his money being doled out to him from 
time to time, months elapsing before he was able 
to get a final settlement with his publisher. Two 
hundred pounds he gave to his brother, who had 
undertaken the care of their mother, and the re- 
mainder he invested in the lease of a farm at 
Ellisland, the choice of the place being determined 
rather by the fancy of the poet than by the judg- 
ment of the farmer. 

47 



His improved circumstances on his return from 
Edinburgh overcame the objections which the 
parents of Jean Armour had made to him, and 
his marriage with her, irregularly contracted long 
before, was now publicly acknowledged and ap- 
proved by the kirk. 

But the farm was a failure, and the earnings 
of his literary labors were soon lost upon it, and, 
much against his will, he accepted a place in the 
excise at fifty pounds per year. 

What he thought of this work we can guess 
from what he said, 

"Searching auld wives barrels 

Och on the day! 

That clarty barm should stain my laurels ; 

But — what'U ye say? 

These movin' things ca'd wives and weans. 

Wad move the very heart o' stanes." 

But the best sentiment he expressed on the sub- 
ject was to the mother of Glencairn, *T would 
much rather have it said that my profession bor- 
rowed credit from me, than that I borrowed credit 
from my profession." 

He left Ellisland, where he had tried in vain 
to combine the business of farmer and exciseman, 
and came to Dumfries. Of his life in this city 
there has been much criticism. He undoubtedly 
partook sometimes too deeply of the pleasures of 
the social bowl, but in this he but shared the 
habits of his time. His companionship was 
sought by all the free spirits that gathered in 
the town, for there was none like "rantin', rovin' 
Robin" to make a night of mirth and merriment. 
But the reports of his conduct were greatly 

48 



exaggerated, not alone by his enemies, but by 
himself. In his periods of melancholy he was 
much given to self censure. No man ever 
acknowledged his faults more freely or more 
publicly, and if he had said less of his failings, 
less would have been thought of them. And 
much of the reproach against him was due to his 
political views and the freedom with which he 
expressed them. His heart responded to the 
rising spirit of independence in France, and it 
was not in his nature to stifle his convictions. 
To be a revolutionist was to lose favor in the 
social realm, and Burns was passed unnoticed, 
because of his principles, by many who had small 
occasion to scorn him because of his habits. 

His dependence upon his salary as exciseman 
irritated him and deepened his despondency. He 
longed for a competency that he might be in- 
dependent ; but from the beginning To tlieend 
fortune mocked his every thrifty endeavor. 

His nature was too sensitive to be indififerent 
to the treatment he was receiving. A friend met 
him one day walking alone on the shady side of 
the street, while the opposite walk was gay with 
successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, not 
one of whom seemed willing to recognize the 
poet. The friend proposed to him to cross, but 
he answered, "Nay, nay, my young friend, that's 
all over now," and then quoted a verse from an 
old ballad, 

"His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow. 
His auld ane looked better than mony ane's new, 
But now he let's 't wear ony way it will hing, 
And casts himself dowie upon the corn bing." 

49 



And yet it was during his Dumfries residence 
that Burns wrote most of his songs. He had 
been gathering old ballads, altering and adding 
to them for Johnson's Museum, besides con- 
tributing some of his own, when George Thom- 
son entered upon his work of compiling Scottish 
melodies and having songs written for them by 
the best writers of the day. He applied to Burns 
for the help of his genius. Burns answered at 
once, promising his assistance, and redeemed his 
promise by contributing some sixty songs, among 
them the finest efforts of his lyric muse. And, 
poor as he was, he made it a labor of love. "As 
to remuneration," he wrote to Thomson, "you 
may think my songs above price or below price ; 
but they shall be absolutely one or the other. In 
the honest enthusiasm with which I embark in 
your undertaking, to talk of money, wages, fee, 
hire, etc., would be downright prostitution of 
soul." 

The man who could write songs like "High- 
land Mary," "Bannockburn," and "A Man's a 
Man for a' That," and make them, even when 
broken with disease and oppressed with poverty, 
a free gift to his country, is entitled to a charity ' 
in judgment broad enough to cover more sins 
than could ever be laid to Burns' charge. 

Not until a few days before his death, when 
he knew that his end was near, and an im- 
portunate creditor was threatening him with a 
process that would cast him in jail, did he alter 
his purpose. He then wrote to Thomson for five 
pounds, for which he says, "I promise and en- 
gage to furnish you with five pounds' worth of 
the neatest song genius you have seen." With 

50 



this letter he enclosed the lines of "Fairest Maid 
on Devon Banks," Thomson sent the money, 
the creditor was paid, and within a week Burns 
was dead. 

"We pity the plumage, and forget the dying 
bird," cried Shelley, as the brilliant Sheridan lay 
deserted upon his deathbed. And so it was with 
Burns. There was a splendid funeral. AU 
Dumfries marched in procession to his grave, 
and a great mausoleum was raised above it. And 
happily better than this, though late it came, his 
family received the substantial recognition of his 
labors that was denied to him. 

When he passed away in the prime of his early 
manhood, his country awoke to the fact that he 
was the greatest of all her children. No man be- 
fore, and no man since, has done so much to 
honor her name. 

He gave to Scottish literature what until then 
it v/anted, a national quality and character. Men 
of letters there were before. Hume and Robert- 
son had written their histories, but for aught 
that appeared in them, they might have come 
from south of the Tweed. Stewart and Reid be- 
long to schools rather than to a nation. Ramsay 
and Ferguson were not strong enough to make 
an impression beyond their own time. Before 
Burns, the Scottish tongue had not attained to 
the dignity of literary recognition. He chose it 
deliberately as the medium of his song, and it 
mastered him as much as he mastered it. Little 
of what he has written in pure English rises 
above the level of mediocrity, and it would not 
be possible to anglicize his Scottish verse with- 
out distinct impairment of its poetic quality. 
51 



The theme of his verse, like its garb, was 
Scotch. It was his country and her people, the 
country as he saw it, the people as he knew them. 
The scenes he describes are those with which he 
was familiar, the men and women his every day 
acquaintances. He never paraphrased books and 
he never copied pictures. And beyond the con- 
fines of his country he had never traveled. Was 
he not, then, narrow and provincial ? In a 
sense he was, as all genuine men and women 
are. Just because he knew Scotland so well 
and loved her so intensely, was he a poet of 
the world and of humanity. Love of home is 
a universal quality. Cosmopolitan people are 
degenerate. They have lost more in depth than 
they have gained in breadth. The man who 
«;cGrns his own people is scorned of all others. 
The ardent patriot who defends his country in 
every emergency, and not the captious citizen 
ever ready to confess her faults, is the type of 
true manhood, understood and appreciated the 
world over. 

In the poetry of Burns there is no suggestion 
of the pent atmosphere of the study infected with 
the smoke of the midnight candle, but it is all 
fresh with the caller air as it sweeps over heath 
and moor. His rhymes came to him as he walked 
the fields and by the streams, and they are the 
harmonies of nature set to song. 

There is a quick movement in all his composi- 
tion. He never lingers in description. A line 
will serve, or, at the most, as in his description 
of the brook in Hallowe'en, a verse. 

62 



"Whyles o'er a linn the burnie plays 

As thro' the glen it wimpelt, 

Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays 

Whyles in a wiel it dimpelt ; 

Whyles glittered to the nightly rays, 

Wi' bickerin' dancin' dazzle, 

Whyles clookit underneath the braes 

Below the spreading hazel." 

In his song of "Westlin Winds" he brings the 
birds of Scotland before us, each in a line. 

"The partridge loves the fruitful fells, 
The plover loves the mountains. 
The woodcock haunts the lonely dells. 
The soaring hern the fountains ; 
Through lofty groves the cushat roves, 
The path of man to shun it ; 
The hazel bush o'erhangs the thrush. 
The spreading thorn the linnet." 

The essential qualities of Burns' poems are 
their truth and humanity. His scenic descriptions 
are but the framing of some human incident, and 
he uses bird and beast and flower always to point 
some moral or adorn some tale of interest to 
man. He wrote as he felt, and so he wrote some- 
times sadly and sometimes bitterly ; sadly, for he 
was often seized with melancholy, and bitterly, 
because he felt often that he was harshly used. 
But, fortunately for us and for him, his muse 
sought him most in his brighter moods, and 
53 



"We see amid the fields of Ayr 

A ploughman who in foul or fair, 

Sings at his task, 

So clear we know not if it is 

The laverock's song we hear or his, 

Nor care to ask." 

In the meanest creature and the humblest in- 
cident that enters into his life, this ploughman 
finds a poem, — in the daisy that he upturns, the 
field mouse, a wounded hare, his aged ewe, his 
dog, his auld mare, the haggis, and even in the 
toothache. And a louse upon a lady's bonnet 
furnishes the occasion of profound moralizing. 

"O wad some power the giftie gie us, 
To see ourselves as ithers see us, 
It wad fra mony a blunder free us, 
And foolish notion." 

In all literature there is no more beautiful 
picture of humble life than he gives us in the 
"Cotter's Saturday Night." It has invested the 
cottage with a charm of interest beyond the 
romance of the castle. It has lightened the 
task of many a weary toiler and kept hope in the 
heart of the heavy laden, and above all, it has 
taught that 

"To make a happy fireside clime 

For weans and wife, 
That's the true pathos and sublime 

Of human life." 

54 



Had Burns lived longer, or had his circum- 
stances in life been different, he might have given 
us some great epic or dramatic work. He con- 
templated one but it was never begun. That a 
great lyric drama was within the reach of his 
powers, his cantata of "The Jolly Beggars" 
abundantly proves. But "Tam O'Shanter" was 
his most ambitious production, and this, for 
picturesque description, for rapid transitions, and 
for a wonderful blending of mirth and morality, 
is not to be surpassed. 

The austere critic thinks that Burns deals too 
lightly with Tam's foibles, and so he thinks of 
Shakespeare in his dealing with Falstaff. But 
these great natures were kindly both, and could 
see the soul of goodness in things evil, and their 
teaching loses nothing of its force because of its 
gentleness. 

Burns could not even rail at the devil without 
speaking at least one word of kindly admonition. 

"Fare you weel, auld nickie ben! 
O wad ye tak a thought an' men ! 
Ye aiblins might, I dinna ken. 

Still hae a stake 
I'm wae to think upo' yon den, 

Even for your sake." 

The songs of Burns will always be the chief de- 
light of his readers, for they run the whole gamut 
of human passion and sentiment. 

He sings of woman, and of every woman that 
ever touched his heart or caught his fancy, and 
then, lest some one might feel slighted, he sang 

55 



to all the sex in his "Green grow the rashes O !" 
Criticism of these songs is impossible. They 
must be read, or, better, they must be sung by 
some loved voice, and then the heart will feel 
their power. To no mere trick of verse do they 
owe their charm. It is the genuineness of their 
sentiment, the reality of their passion, which 
holds us in thrall. It has been noted that in 
"Highland Mary" there is not a single perfect 
rhyme, and this is true, but who cares for that, 
it is none the less the sweetest song ever written 
by man to commemorate a pure and a lost love. 

And where is there such a song of that love 
which never grows old as "John Anderson, My 
Jo?" 

In other fields of lyric verse, he is also the 
master. What drinking song better than "Willie 
brewed a peck of maut ;" what battle hymn 
more inspiring than "Bannockburn ?" Who has 
sounded in such trumpet tones the principles of 
equality as he in "A man's a man for a' that?" 
And when, among the many millions who speak 
the English tongue, friends are gathered to- 
gether, in what song do they pour out their glad- 
ness, but "Auld Lang Syne?" 

He pictured himself often as a wreck upon 
life's sea, and envied sometimes those whose 
"prudent, cautious self control," kept them from 
the rocks ; and yet, of all the merchant argosies 
that, sailing under summer skies and over sum- 
mer seas, came safely into the port of their 
destiny, how many, aye, were there any, bearing 
in their holds a freight so precious to humanity 
as the flotsam and the jetsam cast ashore by the 
wreck of Robert Burns? 

56 



But it is not for us to speak of his life as a 
wreck. Although he died while his manhood was 
in its early prime, he had realized the inspiring 
wish of his youth, some useful plan or book to 
make or sing a song at least. He made the 
book; he sang the song and the book is read 
and the sang is heard the wide world over. 



57 



On the Burns Night of 1911, the Club recorded 
tribute to the memory of a late member, Joseph A. 
Graham, who had been one of the zealous, steadfast 
promoters of the Burns Cottage at the World's Fair: 

"He was of that nature to which the gospel of Burns 
appealed strongly. He viewed men with the tolerance 
bred of a newspaper life. He loved dogs. We, of the 
Burns Club, recall fondly the charming personality of 
our late associate and we voice our tribute to his 
memory, borrowing the lines : 

Heav'n rest his saul, whare'er he be! 
Is the wish o' mony mae than me; 
He had twa faults, or may be three, 

Yet what remead? 
Ae social, honest man want we. 

Tam Samson's dead." 



58 



THE BURNS CLUB OF ST. LOUIS. 



W. K. Bixby 
Scott Blewett 
Hanford Crawford 
Archibald W. Douglas 
David R. Francis 
Robert Johnston 
Frederick W. Lehmann 
Edward S. Robert 
Saunders Norvell 

George M. 



Ben Blewett 
David R. Calhoun 
J. W. Dick 
Franklin Ferriss 
George S. Johns 
Henry King 
W. M. Porteous 
M. N. Sale 
Walter B. Stevens 
Wright. 



59 



